Still not the thick layer at the bottom I remember, the layer of soggy grape-nuts….

Savour has a version that promises the bottom layer….

December 19, 2007 Saveur

serves 6-8

Ingredients

1 cup Grape-Nuts cereal

1 qt. milk

4 eggs

1⁄2 cup sugar

1 tbsp. vanilla extract

1⁄4 tsp. fine salt

Grated nutmeg

Instructions

Heat oven to 350°. Grease a 2-quart glass loaf pan with 1 tsp. butter; set aside. Put cereal into a bowl; set aside.

Bring milk just to a boil over medium heat; pour over cereal and set aside to let soak for 5 minutes.

Beat together eggs, sugar, vanilla, and salt in a large bowl. Slowly pour egg mixture into milk mixture while whisking constantly. Transfer to reserved pan; set in a deep roasting pan. Pour enough hot water into roasting pan that it reaches halfway up pudding pan. Bake until just set, about 1 1⁄4 hours. Let cool; sprinkle with grated nutmeg.

But now that Spring has finally come, and the weather is in the 70’s, the last thing I want to do is turn on the oven and fuss with a water bath – even calling it bain marie doesn’t make it more attractive.

Pea shoots, micro-green salads, pasta with seasonal pestos, eggs with greeny things….It’s still April; there’ll be a day for custard before May.

Goldenrods

as in Goldenrod Eggs….

Martha Stewart Living April 2017 featured a story about Goldenrods…. not the weeds, the eggs

This is the photo from the Betty Crocker version.

Reading the article I had a Remembrance of Things Past moment, except it was for something that I had never eaten….it was something I’d read about.

It was a book I read when I was nine. Or ten. Definitely before 11.

I think it was called

“Two in Patches”.

Patches was the name of the car. More properly, a roadster. I’m pretty sure it was written in the 1930’s.

a 1930’s roadster

There was a brother – who was old enough to drive – and a little sister. She was close to my age – 9 or 10 or 11. They had to drive cross country to get their parents who had been working in the steamy, vine-tangled jungles of Peru. Or hottest Brazil. One of those exotic, faraway places. They had a grown-up, who might have been Grandpa, that they picked up somewhere. They ended up in California, and there was a happily ever after reunion. It would probably be a good companion piece for The Grapes of Wrath.

There were hobos, and not all of them were friendly.

Sometimes they had to beg for work to earn food or gas money. I believe “beg” was their word for it. They gave people rides in exchange for food or gas.

This is pretty close to what I remembering what the girl might have looked like.

It was not a picture book, but there were line drawings.

ANYHOW….

…..at one point they are really hungry and they break into a hen-house. They get caught, and the cagey old farmer invites them in, and the girl cooks up a big old batch of……

EGGS GOLDENROD

and merrily went on with my life. It seemed rather like egg sauce on toast, and I can’t say that I craved it or even thought about it again until I opened up Martha Stuart Living.

So, thank you for a trip back in time. Now I need to make some bread to have the toast to make the eggs….

A version roughly contemporary with my remembered childhood volume:

Goldenrod Eggs

Make a thin white sauce by melting

1 Tbls of butter then adding

1 Tbls flour. Add

1 cup milk

½ tsp salt and

Fg pepper. Stir until thick and smooth. Chop the white of

3 hard cooked eggs and add to white sauce. Cut

4 slices of toast in halves lengthwise.

Arrange on a platter and pour sauce over them. Force yolks through a strainer or potato ricer, letting them fall upon the sauce making a mound of yellow. Garnish with parsley and toast points. This may be served on individual dishes.

Evidently, Fanny Farmer published the first Eggs Goldenrod recipe back in 1896. This is based on other peoples say-so. I’ll be on the look-out.

Eggs Ã la Goldenrod.

3 hard boiled eggs.

1 tablespoon butter.

1 tablespoon flour.

1 cup milk.

1/2 teaspoon salt.

1/8 teaspoon pepper.

5 slices toast.

Parsley.

Make a thin white sauce with butter, flour, milk, and seasonings. Separate yolks from whites of eggs. Chop whites finely, and add them to the sauce. Cut four slices of toast in halves lengthwise. Arrange on platter, and pour over the sauce. Force the yolks through a potato ricer or strainer, sprinkling over the top. Garnish with parsley and remaining toast, cut in points.

Expiration dates

… Christmas rather peters out at Twelfth Night or Epiphany, even for those of us who have managed to keep it going THIS long.

Although, technically, you might continue the Christmas Season until February 2nd – Candlemas – The Presentation of Jesus to the Temple –

Candlemas is also 40 days after Christmas.and the official official end of the Christmas season. So, my door wreath is staying up as long as it doesn’t look shabby or it’s February, whichever comes first.

***

I bought new toothpaste and there was an expiration date on the box… toothpaste has an expiration date?????? Best by Au 17….I’ll be sure to use it up by then. It’s marked on the the end of the tube, so I’ve been missing this for quite some time.

See how subtle it is – and once you turn that end under…

barcode – hidden from view

***

Shrimp was on sale and it was too cheap to leave behind – the post-holiday good news!

I ate ½ as shrimp cocktail (is it true that fruit and shrimp cocktails are Prohibition stories????) as a starter for my supper. I then has some spaghettini with olive oil and the rest of the cocktail sauce as the dressing for the pasta, and then a salad of arugula dressed with blood orange olive oil and honey ginger balsamic vinegar. The rest of the shrimp (and the leftover spaghettini) will be my fritteta supper for tonight.

Hot chocolate with marshmallows as my dessert.

The shrimp Penaeus vannamie was farmed in Viet Nam.

Shrimp also has an expiration date, which seems right…Shrimp(frozen) best by 03-11-2018. Beat it.

***

Mac & cheese – the store brand natural style (that means I bought it in the Natural Foods aisle, implying as it does that most of what they offer is neither natural nor food) was on sale, so another semi impulse purchase. I checked those boxes every which way, and could not find an expiration date.

I wanted to use up the last of the plain yoghurt, which was close to the end AND had been open several days, as well as the beginning to be a little too limpish to want to eat salad-wise salad greens, spinach and kale. This time of year probably as many greens get tossed into soup and other hot foods as actual salads, maybe more.

Cooked the pasta, added the yoghurt, cheese powder and the greens – popped it into a baking pan (no-stick, saving the trouble of having to grease it up), and sprinkled the top with same grated cheese (I also had had the very dregs of a bag of sweet potato chip to use as a crunchy topping. I even remembered them – and noshed them down as I was waiting for the water to boil…..so close…..then I put the pan in a 350° oven for a little while just to finish cooking the greens and to brown the top.

I made a double batch, so not only did I have both supper and lunch, I also have freezer treasure.

***

Life hacks – sounds like something you’d wish the cat didn’t do….but there’s been a workplace wave of microwave egg in a coffee cup. I haven’t tried this at home because most of my coffee cups are not the standard up and down, but hand crafter pottery and narrower at the top the bottom which leads to….. extraction issues

BUT – I was looking for something new for my morning oatmeal.So I added the egg to my oatmeal, instead of in a coffee cup. Like putting a poached egg on top of your hash….

I microwave it …so – I microwave ½ c regular rolled oats w/ 1 cup water for 4 minutes (instead of 5) on 50per cent power. Take it out and make a little basin in the middle of the bowl – there’s often one there naturally – crack the egg and drop it on top of a pat of butter and then back in the microwave for another minute on high (sometimes a minute 30) and then sprinkle liberally with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Last week, after making Indian Pudding and Sops of Pompion for the Mass Bay masses….I found I had rather a lot of sops of pompion left.

There are some things that can be re-heated and be just fine…but OTHER things need to be re-imagined to turn into something else altogether to eat.

Let’s start with the sops……..

Here’s the 17th century recipe for the sops…..

To butter Gourds, Pumpions, Cucumbers or Muskmelons.

Cut them into pieces, and pare and cleanse them; then have a boiling pan of water, and when it boils put in the pumpions, &c. with some salt, being boil’d, drain them well from the water, butter them, and serve them on sippets with pepper.

– 1675. Robert May, The Accomplist Cook,

I’ve never tried this with gourds or cucumber or even muskmelons – only pumpkins.And my pompion/pumpkin/punkins in this case were pre-peeled butternut squash from the grocery store.

In Austraila butternut squash is called butternut pumpkin…confused yet?

I cut the pumpkin into smallish cubes, and dropped it into a pot of boiling, salted water. When it was tender I drained it.

Just like macaroni.

I toasted sliced Thirded Bread from Plimoth Plantation’s Plimoth Bread Company. For the Boston event I carried both elements separately and finished the sops when I got there to Boston:

Put ample butter in a frying pan, add the cubed, boiled squash and saute until heated, golden and just starting to get a little not quite mushy, but most definitely soft. Spread the pumpkin and butter on the toasted bread – I cut each slice into halves or thirds to make it easy to eat as an appetizer.. Sprinkle the tops with fresh ground pepper. Easy. Serve. Great with beer.Or with soup. Once you have it, you’ll figure out how it fits into your life.

And then the leftovers ( a late 19th century term) …..otherwise known as the relics or the orts……to PrestoChangeo into

PUDDIN

Take your pumpkin sops and eyeball them. You should roughly equal amounts of bread and pumpkin. There were some pears that were a few minutes past peak, so they got cut up and added to the mix. With a whole grain bread you’ll need to add a little more moisture. If you have an enriched type bread, not so much to worry.You can break the pieces up or keep them very large to be broken up in the serving.

The liquid is going to be about equal to the mass of the bread and fruit (technically, pumpkin is a fruit, so is squash) so plan panage accordingly.

The bottom half of a granite ware roasting pan was my choice. Any type of baking dish you can put in the oven will do.

Butter the pan very well. Then butter it again even better. As Julia Child has said, “Add more butter”. The butter keeps it from sticking and the butter will help the edges brown and crisp up nicely and just improve everything.

Mix equal amounts of milk/cream and/or half and half with beaten eggs . We used 6 eggs, but four would be enough for a smaller amount. I’m thinking the ratio is 1:1:1:1 – bread:fruit:eggs:milk. If you have juicy fruit (peaches, say, not the gum) keep that in mind when sloshing in liquids. It’s very forgiving. A little longer in the oven helps dry it out.

Commercial Break!

Mix the eggs and milk together with the bread and fruit. Now is the time to think about spicing…..if you don’t know how to pumpkin spice…….

Or you could go with something different….Ginger, cinnamon and some anise seeds are good. Nutmeg on top another good choice. Or orange peel and fennel seeds…..

Drizzle honey all across the top. Be generous, like the caramel on a sea salt caramel latte generous.

This whole thing can sit while the oven heats up…helps every little thing to soak up and get it’s act together, working out the melody and the harmonies so it can stand up and sing when it time to serve it.

Bake in a 350° oven until heated through and has crispy edges and a knife in the middle comes out dry and not dripping.

Enjoy hot, warm or cold.

Now if you had Pumpkin Bread….you could also make a different Punkin Bread Pudding again…

Now – I didn’t make my own ricotta, (and I would argue that what they have you make isn’t actually ricotta, although it sounds plenty GOOD) so I added a little extra lemon peel, and I juiced those yellow orbs because I’m supposed to use the peels and throw the fruit away????

I think NOT.

WASTEFUL

Use the whole lemon – the rind can be dried; the juice can be frozen; the seeds can be planted….

It was quick and easy, it was fine, it was OK. It was also a little….dull.

STIFLE YAWN.

Downright pedestrian.

BORING.

Indifferent Housekeeping.

Then there were the LEFTOVERS.

Some things are fine just re-heated or even served cold as part of lunch the next day, some things need a little more…..help.

For me leftover bascetti usually means

FRITTATA.

Bascetti, a/k/a ‘spaghetti’

To make leftovers into lunch or another night’s supper:

Shop the pantry and fridge for flavor enhancers. I had a red pepper,and a green pepper that I cut up and tossed in a pan with some olive oil, a nice generous amount of olive oil. An onion chopped fine and a clove or two of garlic are not amiss here either. Celery would also work or in a different direction, mushrooms. Choices, you got choices. If you see things in your mind’s eye, do you taste things in your mind’s mouth? Ponder as you scope and chop.

The little grapes tomatoes (that were pretty large for grape tomatoes) and not entirely tomato-ish on their own were halved and added in towards the end, to release the juices and the flavor.

Beat half a dozen eggs with salt, pepper and grated Romano cheese.

Toss the leftover spaghetti with the eggs. I had a little more ricotta and added more lemon peel at this point. Basil would have been nice – or a handful of chopped parsley would have been a different green element way to go.

When the pepper mixture cools a bit, toss that in and around too.

How does it smell ? Adjust until it smells good.

Put more olive oil in the pan and heat it on medium for a minute…add the mixture, flatten it around, and give it a shake to settle it all to the bottom.

Let it fry up for two minutes without disturbing – then shake and shimmy the pan so that the uncooked egg puddles get closer to the heat.

Poke at the edges towards the center with a spatula so that it doesn’t stick.This makes so much more sense at the stove then it seems here on the page.There is a whole lotta cooking that’s learned by looking.

Choose your poking/turning spatula weapon of choice

Turn the heat to low, put a lid on it, and leave it alone for a while. Go set the table,humming Italian songs along with Lou Monte on the CD player.

TUNEFUL

So many songs in the language between Italian and English. If only I could write in that language!

One Potato Salad. As in Potato salad for one. Or as one, of many, Potato Salad possibilities. And there are lots of possibilities…

But this is about a single serving of a somewhat potato salad.

It actually started out as

SCANDINAVIAN FLOWER EGGS WITH SWEET-TART MUSTARD DILL SAUCE

Which is a perfectly good recipe from The Splendid Tablewhich is pretty splendid all on it’s own, both the recipe and The Splendid Table. The flower eggs are the actual hard-boiled and cut into quarters eggs arranged on top of the salad, as if they were the petals of a chrysanthemum….

One Potato whatever size you feel that you need. Or two littler ones. You could microwave this if you don’t have any boiled spuds on hand. Leftover roasted is also good, or even a scmere of leftover potato salad. But with the potato salad option you’re double dipping into the mayo pool….if you try to lighten with Greek yoghurt, there’s a flavor meld issue. Sweet potatoes are also an option. Or sweet potatoes and new potatoes…but that would be a TWO Potato Salad

Eggs – 2-3 are a serving – hard boil ‘em. Lately I’ve started them in boiling water, let them sit in the covered pan for 11 minutes and then put them in cold water. After they’re cooled, shell them and the shells shouldn’t stick.

Serious Eats has the serious low down on hard boiled eggs and are my source for shell free HB.

Dressing:

cider vinegar

mayo

coarse-grained dark mustard

Chopped fresh dill

Fresh dill – as much or as little as you like. Fennel fronds are also good; fresh parsley..let your taste buds help you choose!

salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Lettuce or other leafy green for salad

Greek Yoghurt

Boil the potato and hard boil the eggs. I often do enough for several days worth of salads.

Make the dressing – start with a spoonful of mayo and add every else in dribs, drabs, splashes and pinches. Put into a leak proof container

It’s the addition of beets that makes this red flannel – If you think beets taste more like dirt then ‘earthy’ leave them out and you’ll have basic/regular/plain old fashioned hash.

It’s the red of the beets that makes it red flannel hash – without them it’s merely hash… as if hash were mere,

Hash means to chop (think: hatchet) and you can do this with a knife or in small batches in a food processor – leave bits, don’t make it into a mousse – but we used the hand crank food grinder at its coarsest setting. You want range of sizes in the various bits to create texture and interest.

Manual Home Meat Grinder – some things never change

If you use a non-stick pan, you won’t get a crusty bottom. This is a case where you want a crusty bottom.

1 pound cold cooked corned beef cut into small pieces

1 pound cold boiled potatoes, rough chopped

1 medium onion, finely chopped

Salt and pepper

Butter (or bacon grease if you’ve got it)

4 eggs

2 cooked beets, peeled and diced. (Open a can of beets, drain and take out 2 to use here; put the rest of the beets in a bowl, slice them. Add a spoonful of sugar and cover with cider vinegar. Serve these quick pickled beets with the hash.)

Mix the meat with the roots.

Season with salt and pepper.

Melt the fat in the pan, and when it is foaming, add the hash.

Spread evenly across the pan.

Cook on low heat, pressing down with a spoon or spatula for about 10 minutes. A crust should be beginning to form.

Use the spoon to make 4 indentation in the hash.

Break an egg into each indention.

Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Cover the pan and cook another 5-10 minutes, depending on how runny you like your eggs. (I like mine essentially hard boiled without the shell, but with hash, runny works, too.)

On a good day, you can slip the whole thing from the pan, cut into four wedges….or you can scoop about with a serving spoon, making sure to get some of the crusty bit that are holding the whole thing to the pan at exactly the moment you want it on your plate and do the same, looking more rustic/less Martha Stewart

If you’re craving hash, but used all your corned beef for sandwiches, there’s always the can.